Last January, I traveled to Sri Lanka to write an article, on the return of tourism to the island after two decades of civil war. The article was published in July in an American travel magazine, and people who read it wrote to me that they were making plans to travel there this winter. Now I am haunted by the thought: What if they were lost in the tsunami that struck last Sunday, and their survivors wish they'd never chanced upon my article?

Such is the irrational moral calculus that such an event sets off, because most of us have no way of explaining something like this. The sea off Sri Lanka seemed so placid, so unbelievably beautiful, incapable of evil. And then, last Sunday, it rose 40 feet into the cloudless sky. "We loved the sea. We lived by the sea. Now we hate seeing this sea," said K. Mahalingam, an Indian fisherman who lost four of his family members, 28 fishermen who worked for him, and all eight of his fishing boats.

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Twenty-five thousand people killed by the tidal wave, so far. Who are they? What are their names? How did they love and hate? Where was God when this happened? "God saved me, but why?" a nine-year old boy named Subhani asked a reporter. He had just watched his mother and elder sister drown in front of him as he looked on, helpless; six months ago, the little boy had lost his father.

This is a part of the world where there are gods in the rocks, gods in the trees, gods in the sky and gods in the sea. It was the full moon day, an auspicious one for taking a dip in the ocean, for Hindus and Muslims both. It was also the end of the 40-day period of penance for the followers of a local deity, Aiyappa, when people take a bath on the sea after shaving their heads. And there were lots of Christian revelers on the beach, drawn there by the holiday. It was almost as if God had deliberately enticed his true devotees to the sea; struck them as they approached him to celebrate.

At another Indian village, a fisherman named Seenu had just returned from the sea with his 18-year-old daughter Akamma and his 14-year-old son Lothuraju. They were sitting on the placid beach in the morning, sorting out the catch. First there was vacuum; then there was water. They were all three pulled into the sea by the waves; Seenu thrust his son onto a small boat, and a wave pushed them back toward the land. Seenu next went back into the raging sea to save his daughter; yet another wave drowned them both.

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Some of the survivors are now living with the worst possible guilt: of having chosen among their children. A son over a daughter. A healthy child over a sick one. A bright one over a slow one. The sea allowed them to hold on to one or two of their children; the rest were dragged away screaming for their parents, their eyes showing the anguish of experiencing that final betrayal, which was not that of the sea.

There is a pornography of images of disaster in the Third World: famine, floods, war, earthquakes. Quick television interviews with the victims reinforce those images. And, as with all pornography, the net effect is this: The victims lose their individuality, their humanity, and it becomes easier to distance ourselves from people whose lives we have no idea about. As it is, they all look so foreign -- all these brown or black people, poor things. So it becomes easier to forget them, as our attention moves to a fresh disaster somewhere else, or to a celebrity trial right at home. Such disasters often serve to reinforce our sense of living in a blessed land. "We may have our marriage troubles, honey, but at least we're not those people."

In a perverse way, it might be a blessing that some of the casualties of the tidal wave were tourists from rich countries. "At least 8 Americans among dead," said an AP headline. And 25,000 others. But the headline puts a recognizable, identifiable, face on the tragedy. When honeymooners John and Susan are talking about almost drowning, it helps people here relate when Poonamma and Wimal are crying about having their child snatched out of their arms by the sea. And it wasn't just the fishermen in the seaside shacks who were lost, it was also the King of Thailand's grandson. As prison conditions have a better chance of improving when rich and powerful people go to jail, the chances of a disaster-struck area receiving help are better if People Like Us are among the affected.

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The long-term effects could be worse than the tsunami itself. United Nations officials estimate that this could be the costliest disaster in history, because the worst-hit countries are also among the world's most populous. Health-care systems in most of these countries are still underdeveloped. Epidemics will spread through drinking water polluted by rotting bodies. Malaria, diarrhoea, and lung infections will be rampant. Many thousands more people will die.

Imagine you've just seen your little girl swept out to sea as you watch, screaming, helpless, from shore. You have one child left; and all that can keep you from losing him, too, is the compassion of some government or individual or NGO who can make sure that the water he drinks is clean. These are poor people, doing their best to help themselves; Jan Egeland, the head of the U.N. emergency relief agency, noted that local relief agencies in the affected countries have displayed a "remarkable resilience." Of the rich countries' response, he wondered, "It is beyond me why we are so stingy."

There is only one way to bring back some faith, some hope, some belief to those people who have lost it all. God wasn't there when the tsunami struck; but God lives in us, and let's make sure that his love is delivered now, better late than never. We must let Subhani and Seenu and Mahalingam keep their sanity, their sense of a moral order in the universe, by reaching out to them. Even more important than the scale of the help is the simple gesture, of a human hand reaching out across the giant ocean, with money, with medicine, with technical expertise; in its own way as powerful, as majestic, as unstoppable as the tsunami itself.

Mr. Mehta is the author of Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found, just published by Knopf.